PositiveThe Los Angeles Review of BooksThis ambitious memoir glints with poetry and wisdom...something aching, endless, unresolved, and extremely compelling ... The glossary is a clever choice of form. Like mental illness, a glossary impedes forward momentum (if one is compelled to flip forward and back), but it also provides a logic that real life doesn’t offer. As meaning accumulates, readers may become pleasantly ensnared in terminology ... The glossary can also become tedious, though, especially when the writer revisits similar moments from her past. She has smartly meshed a chronological narrative with the alphabetical sequencing, but that means the less plot-driven entries often seem superfluous. For instance, her frequent descriptions of old family negatives detailing facial expressions, clothing, houses, cars, et cetera, are not as compelling as the keenly observed scenes that make up the story’s arc. These more descriptive entries might convey some of the family’s emotional complexities, but Adrian’s novelistic attention to scene works even better. Either way, her prose is lyrical and funny, often in the same moment ... Readers may sometimes feel unnerved by the writer’s inability to maintain firm boundaries, as she variously serves as her mother’s analyst, defender, lawyer, social worker, innkeeper, companion, nurse, personal assistant, and chef ... For the reader, anyway, Adrian has accomplished her goal. Her glossary, in making a place for everything, has provided a way through this harrowing tale of the toll of generational trauma.
